The invention relates to delivery of weather product information to the cockpit of an aircraft and in particular to a network architecture and on-board systems for providing real time weather data to an aircraft.
Commercial aircraft operating in United States air space have on-board weather radar systems. Existing on-board weather radar systems provide data on weather local to the aircraft, for example, weather ahead of the aircraft within the range of the weather radar unit. The weather information is displayed on a cockpit weather display. However, the weather data collected by an aircraft is available only to the particular aircraft experiencing the weather, the data is not transferable to the ground or to other aircraft. Thus, today, weather information displayed on on-board cockpit displays is limited to the weather returns supplied by the on-board weather radar.
Visual depictions and bounding of significant hazardous weather areas outside the range of an on-board weather radar system on a cockpit display would be a significant operational tool for the aircraft crew.
Systems for providing an aircraft with weather products outside the aircraft local area have been proposed but posses several limitations. First, dedicated equipment is necessary to implement the systems. This requirement introduces additional cost to the airline operator for acquisition, installation, maintenance, and training and in additional fuel burn due to the additional weight of the equipment. Second, to present the information to the pilot, large quantities of data must be uplinked. The resulting bandwidth requirements make real time weather uplinks impractical, and/or prohibitively expensive, thereby diluting the benefits of such a system.
The present invention recognizes and resolves significant problems of the prior art by providing an aircraft weather information system wherein weather information is provided to the aircraft from various sources external to the aircraft.
According to one aspect of the invention, local atmospheric data collected by aircraft weather radar systems and other aircraft sensors, including actual aircraft accelerations and other flight data; altitude; and position are down-linked to a groundstation. The down-linked data is assembled with other weather information and an up-to-date atmospheric model is developed. Weather products based on the up-to-date atmospheric model are up-linked to aircraft and displayed in the cockpit. The up-linked weather products can be displayed upon command depicted as bounded polygons on the cockpit display.
According to another aspect of the invention, the weather system of the present invention works with the existing world wide aircraft communications network. This feature of the present invention minimizes the acquisition and operating costs to the aircraft owner while also reducing system infrastructure requirements.
According to yet another aspect of the invention, the present invention is designed and operates so as to be tolerant of the bandwidth and other limitations of the existing aircraft communications network. Data can be compressed and/or the graphics data can be up-linked such that post-processing of the uplinked data can occur aboard the aircraft for generation of the display.
According to another aspect of the invention, the invention includes interactive features that reduce the crew workload in weather monitoring. The system can be configured by crew or ground operations to automatically alert the crew to selected weather threats, such as turbulent conditions or thunderstorm activity. In addition, the system is configurable such that tailored weather information can be transmitted based on aircraft position or flight plan. Destination weather can also be up-loaded for crew viewing. Such features allow weather information to be integrated into real-time flight planning decisions. According to still another aspect of the invention, information currently conveyed to the crew as text, e.g. AIRMET, SIGMET, can now be shown graphically aiding spatial comprehension.
Other advantages and features of the invention will be apparent in view of the following detailed description and appended drawings.